A Book that Changed My Life……

The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships and Other Adventures
Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy
Ten Speed Press, 2009 296 Pages

I've been practicing Ethical Sluttery for 18 months now and it's all been down to the September Edward Carpenter Community's Gay Men's Weeks

It all started in September 2009- “The Dance Between Power and Intimacy”-my first ECC experience and, there I was, all alone.

Back home I was in a long-term relationship. The erotic expression of our love for each other had stopped years before. We were maintaining a monogamous tradition fearing the potential destabilising consequences of messing with the arrangement. I had been interested in meditation as a homphobia-free means of satisfying my hunger for spiritual nourishment and, I suppose, at the time I was searching for a spiritual home.

The workshops during that week helped me to put my monogamous sexual barriers down. I explored how the experience of erotic sexual massage could combine with spiritual meditative practice and how loving intimacy was rapidly fostered between individuals who were prepared to engage in vulnerable-making self-exposure. I didn’t realise at the time that this would set a foundation for me to embark on a path of authentic personal growth and enable me to engage in loving encounters like never before. Wow!

When I returned from the week I was on fire! The stakes were high but I had to risk discussing with my partner making changes to the 12-year-old monogamous agreement we made when we’d first met. Being a naturally jealous bloke his reaction was to be cautiously OK about it. We agreed to me doing sexual things outside the relationship provided I would tell him what happened if he asked but not to tell him if he didn’t ask. I love him and I didn’t want to hurt him but I also sensed a chance to grow emotionally, spiritually and sexually. Here was a genie, which could not be popped back into its bottle.

A good friend made on this first Gay Men's Week introduced me to the Faeries and I went to three gatherings that year- Featherstone Castle, Folleterre and Wansee. As is often the case I came away from each of these gatherings with something important learned about myself. Featherstome held a mirror up to my life-long approval seeking programming. Folleterre helped me to reflect on how my father’s [patriarchy’s] disapproval of the feminine aspects of my nature set the scene for not only my internalised homophobia but also a kind of internalised misogyny of which I had been previously completely unaware. Wansee opened my eyes to how the way I presented myself to others was profoundly affected by fear of shame and social rejection.

So it was in the context of this roller coaster ride of personal growth and self-discovery that I was introduced to The Ethical Slut

I wasn’t sure if it was possible to be a Really Dirty Slut and to also be a Really Good Person at the same time. This book showed me how!

The authors reclaim the abusive term Slut in the same way that Queer has been reclaimed for marginal sexual orientation and gender identity and in the same way that Faerie is reclaimed to proudly assert our sissy natured-ness. ‘Sluts’ are those who dare to have sex more often, and in less conventional ways, than everyone else and, who refuse to be cowed into submitting to the social norms. ‘Ethical Sluts’ are those who do this openly, honestly, lovingly and caringly with the intention of harming no one.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is stopping themselves from having, or openly admitting to having desired ethical sex out of fear that it would be immoral, socially disapproved of and because the consequences would mean guilt and social exclusion.

The authors convincingly argue that our society is geared towards regulating sexual relationships so they fit into monogamous, politically and economically acceptable hetero-imitative configurations, which provide ostensibly stable environments for habitat-living-style-consumerism and child rearing. They confront the idea that sexual relationships exist in a ‘starvation economy’-' i.e. that there aren’t enough sexual relationships to go around and so sexual relationships need to be jealously protected and safeguarded. They argue that there is an infinite potential for sexual relationships of all shapes and sizes and the key to accessing these in order to meet one’s many and varied sexual appetites is, firstly, honesty in communication with one’s partners and, secondly, negotiating clear unambiguous agreements which enable the involved partners to feel emotionally safe and secure.

Of course it isn’t all necessarily going to be a bed of roses and it would be surprising if jealousies didn’t arise in polyamorous arrangements. The authors present convincing arguments about how the working through of jealousies is a potentially very good thing both for the development of the affected individuals but also for the relevant relationships.

It could even be possible that ‘compersion’ –the emotion of joy at one’s partner’s happiness with another sexual partner might even prevail!

The interesting thing about becoming honestly polyamorous [as opposed to the conventional dishonest non-consensual non-monogamous pattern of polyamory-or ‘having an affair’- prevalent in western cultures] is that it allows you to enjoy a wide variety of sexual partners without having to lie or feel bad about it. And rather than distancing you from love and spirit it has the potential to deepen you spiritual growth too. If that isn’t enough to convince, you also get a chance to feel the full force of conventional societal disapproval and to work on your own issues of guilt shame and approval seeking!

Read the book and start to change the world!

The Faeries Taught Me How To Fly!

I was sitting by my fire last night watching the flames flickering around the burning logs remembering the tribal faerie camaraderie of a blazing Folleterre campfire from just a few days before.

Two years ago the Faeries were to me, a strange, esoteric bunch of folk on the margins, gathering together in weird and wonderful places and living basically without the necessities of standard creature comforts. I now see a Faerie Gathering as a rich source of spiritual nutrition and an opportunity for physical and psychological healing. The Faeries are my community group. Better than that-they are my family!

So how did I transition from Faerie-sceptic to Faerie-sister in a mere 24 months? I suppose any metamorphosis requires a pre-change period, a caterpillar phase. My caterpillar got tired of waiting for a spiritual home to present itself and decided that she would need to become the spiritual home she longed for. Reading books like ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron, 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle, and ‘Coming Out Spiritually’ by Christian de la Huerta helped to nourish and nurture my nascent yet deeply conflicted spiritual nature and my creative soul.

Then my personal life reached a crossroads. I was exhausting myself attempting to sustain my partner in a kind of co-dependent set-up. I felt damned if I did something about it and damned if I didn’t!

Enter Stage Right the Edward Carpenter Community. What a lovely bunch of guys. A virtual and episodically realised intentional set of communities. During the course of a September Gay Men’s Week at Laurieston Hall [a great rambling mansion in Dumfries] I was gently encouraged to put down my defences and to make myself sexually and emotionally vulnerable in the company of loving, caring strangers.

By sharing my deepest darkest dilemmas, I was coaxed into finding solutions and galvanized into overcoming my paralysis.

Friends made during that ECC week encouraged me to attend a Faerie Gathering. Featherstone 2010 introduced me to the magical world of Faeridom. Gifted Magical Boys, Shamans, Magicians Alchemists, Story Tellers, Androgynes, Dancers, Musicians and Poets drawn together to love, to laugh, to heal and to co-create. Through the patient love generated in Heart Circles there and at four subsequent gatherings and, through some deep authentic faerie friendships I’ve grown to understand some of the unhelpful, distorting drivers in my wounded self.

At the start of my second half-century I finally recognised how my child-like desire for, and righteously indignant sense of entitlement to, my fathers crippled love kept playing out as a recurring approval-seeking theme in most of my interpersonal transactions and how this interfered with my capacity for true love and deep intimacy.

Thankfully I can now let go of shame as a guiding influence in my decision-making. Instead I embrace ethical consensual non-monogamy as a way of enriching my loving relationships.

Faeries have emboldened me to experiment with tantric meditative sexual massage practice and thanks to Tantra for Gay Men, there is now a regular monthly meet-up here in Brighton.

I am now on a Buddhist-Tantric-Pagan Spiritual path, which affords me a sense of peace and tranquillity in the noise and the chaos of modern life

So thank-you ECC, thank-you Faeries, thank-you T4GM without your existence I would never have developed my Faerie Butterfly wings and learned how to fly!

Resources:

ECC

www.edwardcarpentercommunity.org.uk/

Albion Faeries

www.albionfaeries.co.uk/The Faeries.htm

Folleterre-Eurofaerie Sanctuary in the French Vosges Mountains

http://www.folleterre.org/home.htm

T4GM- Brighton Tantra Club

www.tantra4gaymen.co.uk/events-calendar

I’m not going to write about pride this year.
I’m sure we’ll all get through it in our own ways!
The day after pride I’ll be heading off to a faerie gathering to take in the sights, smells, sounds, flavours and sensations of the beautiful Folleterre Faerie Retreat in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France
Faeries speak from the heart in Heart Circles passing a talisman, which gives the holder the fully concentrated attention of the group. This practice helps to develop a sense of authentic subject-subject relatedness to each other and to the world in general. Faeries will gently Hiss if they identify with, or wish to be supportive of, anything said or done in the Circle
This is what I will be saying.........

Right from the Heart of a Faerie

Faerie friends please don’t Hisssssssss…….after this!

It will only mess with my approval-seeking issues

And it just might serve to skew my words away from the authentic voice of my heart

Big Heart Circles make my chest thump with fear

How will I speak with honesty?

Will I be heard with love?

My mind goes blank and drivel comes out of my mouth

It’s so easy to make a weird first impression

Maybe I’ve already pissed off those who find approval seekers tiresome!

I am learning that the potential for intimacy to grow in my world

Comes from honestly and bravely owning up to my vulnerabilities

So here I am! Stripped naked before you all! A crowd of loving strangers!

What is my truth?

What do I seek to become every moment?

Where am I coming from and where am I going? I’ll tell you:

I want to cultivate a sacred sexual and emotional intimacy with the people in my life

And to recognize the sterility and emptiness of a life surrounded by others ignorant of my true self

I want to find ways to have a helpful influence

But I’ll shy away from Earthly Power

I want to keep my energies in balance

And remain present to the healthiness of my beautiful body

In a kind and caring way, I am discovering and dismantling sources of homophobic and transphobic shame which, in the past, have stifled the choices I’ve made and I hope my new-found sense of shamelessness is not seen as selfish and antisocial

But instead helps others to follow my example

I have discovered that for most of my life I have been carrying a barely conscious sense that I had an entitlement to being loved, an entitlement to being engaged with, an entitlement to having people assist me and an entitlement to being approved of!

I’m not entitled to any of these things from anyone but myself

I’m trying to de-commission my ego but I want to become more tolerant of my little shrunken ego and much more tolerant of the big fat egos of others

I want to give big free dollops of love generously from my heart-just for the sake of it!

When the shadow in this community, and out there in the wider world, becomes manifest …..

I want to be able to recognize it as a part of who I am

It will be something I dislike about myself which I am trying to move away from or

It will be something I haven’t quite acknowledged in my own nature projected onto others

I’m on a quest for Joy and making lots of friends but in a binary world it is easy to make enemies- both real and imaginary…….

So-if I upset you it will not be intentional-

and so I ask you now- do not look angry or smile and bitch about me to yourself or someone else

Please please talk to me about it.

Otherwise I won’t be aware of my mistake or I’ll have to assume I’m just imagining it!

That’s probably enough for now!

An Original Albion Faerie Queen- one of Britain’s Stately Homos

Just as it is inevitable, that a career in politics must end in failure, then too, perhaps, every relationship with a hero must end ultimately with disenchantment….

The enchantment with my hero began when, as a shy queer adolescent searching for affirmation in a homophobic Catholic school in the homophobic North of England, I became aware of a character so totally convinced of his inalienable right to be queer that he flamboyantly asserted his sexuality and endured the sticks and stones hurled at him by an even more hostile bygone era with equanimity and wit.

To my scared and nascent queer nature these strident personality attributes [which I would not have dared to dream of emulating] became a beacon of hope towards which I could steer my sense of ‘daring to be different’. So whilst my brothers had their posters of football and rugby players [whom I would secretly lust after] plastered on the bedroom walls, my forbidden aspirational role model secreted in the far reaches of the back of my mind was one of Britain’s Stately Homos!

Whenever I reached an important coming-out juncture in my life and was quibbling with myself about wimping out, I would refer back to my icon, take succour, feel the fear then just get on with it. So it is to Quentin Crisp that I give thanks for the proper development of my queer sensibility.

Without his existence, without his avidly read life story as depicted in The Naked Civil Servant, without his witty epithets thrown in the face of unanimous disapproval, I might never have overcome what seemed at times to be the overwhelming odds against me. I might never have been brave enough to take my first faltering steps towards the consummation of my disapproved of sexual passions. So thank you, Quentin, you were to me, at that time, a character of epic proportions, unknowingly spurring me on from strength to strength.

I have learned, however, over the years, that you were, as I am, a human being with faults and flaws and for that, of course, I forgive you. Your insufferable egocentricity might even have been the source of your immensely shameless, eccentricity! As bravely shocking as larger-than-life characters such as you can be, I have learned to be cautious around those of your ilk. I need space to express myself so I now spend time on relationships with those who are not only busy developing their authenticity but who are also interested in, and affirming of, mine.

There was a stage in my life when my co-dependency had me hanging around guys with massive egos so I could hide away by relinquishing my own. It is interesting that just as elements of Quentin’s brazen character spurred me on to become my true self, the deficits in his nature have me recoiling towards a quest for true intimacy in love. Sadly, it seems, this would have been something completely anathema to him.

So Quentin Crisp I celebrate your life and your death in me. Had you not been so unashamedly You, I would never have been so unashamedly Me!

Edward Carpenter's views on Religion, Spirituality and Science

Sensing the recent raging exchanges on The ECC email discussion group about Religion, Science, the Meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything, Edward turned in his grave, smiled and began to quote from the conclusion of his book PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CREEDS: Their Origin and Meaning.....

"…..this idea of ultimate separation is an illusion, and in truth we are all indefeasible and indestructible parts of one great Unity in which "we live and move and have our being." That being so, it is clear that there remains in the end a self-consciousness which need by no means be abandoned, which indeed only comes to its true fruition and understanding when it recognizes its affiliation with the Whole, and glories in an individuality which is an expression both of itself and of the whole.

"The human child at its mother's knee probably comes first to know it has a 'self' on some fateful day when having wandered afar it goes lost among alien houses and streets or in the trackless fields. That appalling experience – the sense of danger, of fear, of loneliness - is never forgotten; it stamps some new sense of Being upon the childish mind, but that sense, instead of being destroyed, becomes all the prouder and more radiant in the hour of return to the mother's arms. The return, the salvation, for which humanity looks, is the

return of the little individual self to harmony and union with the great Self of the universe, but by no means its extinction or abandonment - rather the finding of its own true nature as never before……

"…..As a kind of rude general philosophy we may say that there are only two main factors in life, namely, Love and Ignorance. And of these we may also say that the two are not in the same plane: one is positive and substantial, the other is negative and merely illusory. It may be thought at first that Fear and Hatred and Cruelty, and the like, are very positive things, but in the end we see that they are due merely to absence of perception, to dullness of understanding. Or we may put the statement in a rather less crude form, and say that there are only two factors in life: (1) the sense of Unity with others (and with Nature) - which covers Love, Faith, Courage, Truth, and so forth, and (2) Non-perception of the same - which covers Enmity, Fear, Hatred, Self-pity, Cruelty, Jealousy, Meanness and an endless similar list. The present world which we see around us, with its idiotic wars, its senseless jealousies of nations and classes, its fears and greeds and vanities and its futile endeavours - as of people struggling in a swamp - to find one's own salvation by treading others underfoot, is a negative phenomenon. Ignorance, non-perception, are at the root of it. But it is the blessed virtue of Ignorance and of non-perception that they inevitably-if only slowly and painfully - destroy themselves. All experience serves to dissipate them. The world, as it is, carries the doom of its own transformation in its bosom; and in proportion as that which is negative disappears the positive element must establish itself more and more…….

"…….The first condition of social happiness and prosperity must be the sense of the Common Life. This sense, which instinctively underlay the whole Tribal order of the far past - which first came to consciousness in the worship of a thousand pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless sacrifices, initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for a time in the Communism of the early Christians and in their adorations of the risen Saviour - must in the end be the creative condition of a new order: it must provide the material of which the Golden City waits to be built. The long travail of the World-religion will not have been in vain, which assures this consummation. What the signs and conditions of any general advance into this new order of life and consciousness will be, we know not. It may be that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision often comes quite suddenly, and generally perhaps after a period of great suffering, so to society at large a similar revelation will arrive - like "the lightning which cometh out of the East and shineth even unto the West" - with unexpected swiftness. On the other hand it would perhaps be wise not to count too much on any such sudden transformation.

"Dr. Frazer, in the conclusion of his great work The Golden Bough, bids farewell to his readers with the following words:

"The laws of Nature are merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of the World and the Universe. In the last analysis magic, religion and science are nothing but theories [of thought]; and as Science has supplanted its predecessors so it may hereafter itself be superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some perfectly different way of looking at phenomena - of registering the shadows on the screen - of which we in this generation can form no idea."

"I imagine Dr. Frazer is right in thinking that "a way of looking at phenomena" different from the way of Science, may some day prevail. But I think this change will come, not so much by the growth of Science itself or the extension of its 'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the human heart and a change in its psychology and powers of perception.

"Gradually, out of an infinite mass of folly and delusion, the human soul has in this way disentangled itself, and will in the future disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of true freedom. All the taboos, the insane terrors, the fatuous forbiddals of this and that (with their consequent heart- searchings and distress) may perhaps have been in their way necessary, in order to rivet and define the meaning and the understanding of that word. To-day these taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these things, free - familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all, allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by none. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far prophecy down the ages - finding after all the long-expected Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul."

Offered in Love

Timkerbel

x

Big Love to Simon Dawson for The Edward Carpenter Archive without which we might never have known.....

http://www.edwardcarpenter.net/ecpcc17.htm

Atheist to Spiritual Being- a letter to the Edward Carpenter Community

It is with more than a little trepidation that I make this posting!

I will endeavour to type from my heart as if I were talking in a heart circle holding the talisman and speaking my truth in love without any malice towards any of you.

I do not invite electronic responses to my contribution.

If you want to talk to me about it give me a call . Or catch up with me at Laurieston in September.

I am a man of Science and much of what Ted, Nigel and Dave have contributed in the recent skirmishes about Spirituality resonate with the Empiricist in me.

Ten years ago [having rejected my inculcated rejecting and invalidating Christian faith] I was feeling empty and joyless yearning for the spiritual baby I had thrown out with the religious bathwater of my youth. Unfortunately there was nowhere to go with this.

I learned to meditate and found that the skill of detaching from my many and varied streams of consciousness was an invaluable first step toward recognizing that 'I' constituted more than my brain's constant chatter.

I went on a 10-day silent retreat meditating 10 hours a day and became more skilled through practice without distraction.

Suspecting there was an important link between my sexuality and the path, which would result in the cultivation and sustenance of a spiritual life I tracked down a book of daily readings ‘The Essential Gay Mystics’, compiled by Andrew Harvey.

Reading a little bit of what a Gay Spiritual person had written every day helped. Because the contributors were Gay it helped to open my mind and to trust that I might find a way to reconcile my sexuality with some form of spirituality. The messages from these spiritual voices would not be barbed with homophobia.

At around this time I was also feeling that there were untapped and underdeveloped creative aspects of myself, which needed attention.

A friend suggested that I embark on the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron- a 12 week self help programme to help kick-start an Artist's blocked and shut down creativity.

Writing 3 pages per day and giving my inner Artist a weekly treat in the form of an Artist's date resuscitated my ailing creative spirit and I started to learn how acts of creativity are unscientific-ish expressions of my own uniqueness and vulnerability. By being brave enough to tolerate the potential for ridicule I started to feel a connection with something greater than me. As if the creativity didn't belong to me but instead flowed through me.

Then on another silent retreat I read Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now’, which opened my awareness to my unhelpful habit of mentally residing in the past and future, and thus being unavailable to the most powerful moment we ever have in our lives- now!

In September 2009 I went on my first ECC GMW at Laurieston. It blew my mind and opened me up to how my sexuality could be an integral part of my spirituality [and how my spirituality could be an integral part of my sexuality].

Having ordered the book 12 months before I was finally ready to read 'Gay Spirit Myth and Meaning' [Ed Mark Thompson] and this consolidated a sense that my sexuality and spirituality could happily co-exist but there was going to be no convenient group, Church or religion to support or validate me. The support would need to be created because it hasn't quite happened yet.

I was lucky enough to meet and befriend a beautiful Witch who helped me to explore the hitherto Taboo area of Witchcraft. I attended a number of Pagan rituals and recognized that there was something very real, familiar accepting and human about the practice- and not a single human sacrifice in evidence anywhere!

My interest in Pagan ritual has been stimulated by attending 4 Faerie Gatherings and I've just finished reading 'Gay Witchcraft Empowering the Tribe' by Christopher Penczac which has certainly empowered me as a strong and solitary practitioner.

As a result of attending the 2010 Laurieston GMW I teamed up with a local ECCer here in Brighton [Big Love Ian-How's your Magic Boy?] and together we're working through 'Gay Spirit Warrior-an empowerment workbook for men who love men' by John R Stowe [a book I bought ten years ago when I first started to feel spiritually undernourished but which I never had the motivation to read]

I'm writing all this to highlight that for me, my sense of spirituality could never have materialized as the outcome of an intellectual email exchange.

What has the move from atheist to spiritual being required of me? At least a temporary suspension of disbelief, a real engagement of my imagination and quite a bit of persistence.

So if you're feeling sad, joyless and spiritually hungry try a scientific experiment.

In the true spirit of the scientist aware of phenomena unexplained by conventional wisdom, take that leap of faith, suspend your disbelief, risk feeling vulnerable, meditate, read, be creative for a few months and then step back and see if you can sense something spiritual going on in your life.

Maybe we could talk about the results of your experiment when we meet at Laurieston in September

:-)

If spirituality cannot be part of your consciousness please don't shout at me because it is part of mine. I have experienced life without spirit and it didn't suit me.

I love you

Timkerbel

Anniversary of my first Pagan Ritual

Last year my witch friend Patrick asked me if I’d like to attend a pagan ritual.

We all assembled at his flat near Brighton seafront. The atmosphere was informal and relaxed.

The ritual was to celebrate Imbolic [pronounced Im-mulk]. The mid point between the winter solstice- Yule and spring equinox- Easter.

There were eight of us. Patrick, his protégé Tara, his boyfriend Winston, Tara’s boyfriend Sam, Patrick and Winston’s trans flatmate Deborah, Welsh Alyn from London, Nick a friend visiting from Manchester and Me.

Patrick asked us to write something about what we would like to grow in ourselves and then to pick a word which summarized the intent.

We read our intentions to each other, sealed what we had written in envelopes with wax to be unveiled after a year, and then processed off to the beach.

The night was crisp. The sea was alive and welcoming our presence.

A relaxing meditation led by Winston took us through a visualization to cleanse our chakras. Base- Genital- Solar Plexus- Heart- Throat- Third Eye- Crown

Flowers opening Red- Orange- Yellow- Green- Blue- Purple and then Bright cleansing Light

A Circle was cast in the light of the late January moon.

The quarters were called

The Spirit of the East representing Air and Thought was invoked by Deborah and welcomed to the Circle

The Spirit of the South representing Fire and Energy was invoked by Sam and welcomed to the Circle

The Spirit of the East representing Water and Emotional Drive was invoked by Alyn and welcomed into the Circle

The Spirit of the North representing Earth and Manifestation was invoked by Winson and welcomed into the Circle

The God was invoked and welcomed by Tara

The Goddess was invoked and welcomed by Patrick

We were then asked to shout out our Intention Word

Patrick started and shouted

TOGETHER

Deborah followed and shouted

HUMILITY

Then Nick

CREATIVITY

Sam

TURN-AROUND

Alyn

CLARITY

Me

PRESENCE

Winston

TRANSFORMATION

And finally Tara

DISCIPLINE

Round the circle we went three times shouting our intentions.

We danced and screamed stamping our feet on the clacking pebbles of the beech our hot breath turning to white steam in our excitement.

Wine was poured into a goblet and passed around.

We looked to the moon and it replied to us with the most beautiful moonbow the first I had ever knowingly witnessed.

We were transfixed in a magickal moment.

The Earth, The Universe, Our Bodies, Our Spirits!

All Was One for Just That Moment.

The Circle was then closed but not broken and we processed back to the flat.

When we’re settled and those present at last year’s rituals open their sealed intentions to themselves from last year, Alyn takes a poem he’s written and reads it to us

The Coming of Spring

Heard in the far distance- a rhythm pounding closer

A great white mare thrashes the bright air

Magnificent with her tail of silver fire

Galloping hard over granite earth

Sounding a drumbeat with hooves of polished steel

Over and over in measured dance.

Thud close followed Thud.

Waking the sleeping from slumber

Dark earth stirs, sap rises

And fresh green creeps skywards

Milk flows from breast to suckle new life

….And She emerges

Young vibrant and virgin white

Garlanding the day as in her footsteps tender flowers spring

It has been winter but now she smiles

And The Circle turns!

A Prayer to a Body in Need of a Good Rest Or……

Or…… My Reflections on My Reflections on My Reflection

[Or…… What You Might End Up Saying If You Turn Your Negative Body Talk Into Positive Affirmations]

Here is a Body

Vulnerable and Exposed…..

Shameless

Sacred Holy

Totally Acceptable and Divine

Spiritually Good

Slim, Trim, Slim and Trim

Surprisingly Youthful

Young and Vital

Cuddly and Curvaceous

Smooth and Furry

Muscled

Beautifully Androgynous

Masculine Enough

Dinky Genitals- Perfectly Formed

:-)

Beautiful, Amazing, Hairy and Handsome

Strong, Adapting, Dynamic, Evolving, Growing

Wonderful Changing Regenerating Miraculous

Attractive, Sexually Attractive, Tasty

In Surprisingly Good Nick

A Great Oak

A Well-Looked-After Vintage Car

Hello!

You are Smouldering, Sensual and Sensuous

Feeling, Touching, Tasting, Smelling

The Silent Witness and Guide when Ethereal and Material Clash

The Vessel

The Instrument

The Tool

Transient, Transitory and Transitional

Indispensable Now- Yet Ultimately Disposable

Body!

Talk To Me!

Show Me How You Feel!

Why am I Gay? Lucky Me Being Me!

The fashionable answer to the question ‘Why are you Gay’ for any self -respecting queer is that one has no choice in the matter and that sexuality, along with eye colour and shoe size is simply predetermined by genetic make-up. I’m not sure however that for me it was quite so simple!

My route towards a preference for phallic and masculine erotic stuff doesn’t seem, on reflection, to have been a process of simply following a biologically driven Fixed Action Pattern.

My parents were strange socially aloof individuals and, although my mother was loving, my father was a gruff and emotionally distant disciplinarian. My much older brothers kept each other company and successfully bridged a link into healthy male social networks. Whilst they were out playing rugby and football, processing their adolescent testosterone drives along socially acceptable avenues, I was a six-year-old baby playing with my 8-year-old sister and learning the secrets of the feminine world. I was a girly boy. I liked to roller skate and skip with the girls. But most of all I loved it when they talked about boys. These remote sweaty masculine figures with deep voices and prominent Adam’s Apples; aggressive, unreliable and unfaithful; pulsating with muscles and veins and sprouting pubic hair. What deliciously and forbidden-ly tasty creatures they seemed to me!

I remember at the age of 7 or 8 hanging out with my sister’s friends as they were talking about boys and thinking that I would end up being a most unusual man when I grew up because of the very intimate understanding I was developing about boys from girls.

My dad was a Scout Leader so summer camps meant exposure to sex obsessed adolescent lads. They were bemused by the innocence of their Scout Leader’s 8-year-old son. I’d sneak off and hang around Eagle Patrol to get my daily fix of sex education. We'd stand around the campfire, the older boys caressing their private bits under their speedos and I’d listen wide eyed as they would solemnly and graphically describe for me ‘How I was Born’, ‘What is Spunk’, 'How to Wank' and the technicality, even, of conception as a consequence of a ripped condom [‘Being Born on a Bursted Johnny’].

After this I wanted to get closer to boys but I never seemed to properly get the way they thought and so they remained inaccessible, alien and a bit frightening to me. I eroticized the fear and the fantasies followed.

I longed to become sexually mature but it seemed to take forever. My relatively delayed puberty at 16 meant that I was cruelly exposed to 5 years worth of watching boys in the school showers gradually morphing into men. When yet another member of my year group dropped his balls I’d be filled with a mixture of dread and arousal- dread that this thing might never happen for me, and arousal at the steamy proximity of yet more naked man flesh!

I then learned to internalize society’s homophobia, acted as masculine as I could pretend, had sex with a man for the first time at the age of 20 and started the very slow process of coming out. I’ve spent the last thirty years chipping away at a subconscious fear of rejection for being different. Thankfully the shame is dissipating, I’m learning the joy of openly acknowledging my vulnerability and that therein lies the secret of true intimacy.

Why am I gay? It’s just me being me! And that’s really lucky.